changing standards for multi touch, multi user interfaces?

7 Jul 2009 - 2:25am

Last reply:
6 years ago

8 replies

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Michelle Lau

2009

i'm currently in a master's program in interactive media at london
college of communications. for my dissertation, i'm discussing the
implications multi touch, multi user interfaces would have on current
information architecture standards. for example, navigation for a
multi touch, multi user interface needs to be somewhat universal or
symmetric, something that is not taken into account by current IA
standards.

in your work experience has anyone seen other considerations for
multi touch interfaces that are not taken into account by current
standards?

thank you for your help! best wishes in your many projects and
endeavors.

Comments

7 Jul 2009 - 10:26am

Lynn Marentette

2007

I forgot to mention that universal design for learning and universal
usability principles should be considered when designing for
multi-touch and multi-user environments.

There needs to be flexibility and allowances for customization within
the program, and also a good understanding of the situations in which
the application will be used.

You have to account for occlusion, the angles that people use when
they point or manipulate the interface with their fingers and hands,
what sort of feedback they might expect, and so forth.

I have posted on this topic quite a bit on two blogs. If you visit
the blogs, do a keyword search. Most of my posts have links to more
detailed information. Also, I've posted in the UX section of the
NUI-Group forum- along with others who have similar interests in the
multi-touch, multi-user area.

>i'm currently in a master's program in interactive media at london>college of communications. for my dissertation, i'm discussing the>implications multi touch, multi user interfaces would have on current>information architecture standards.

While the more overt part of the user experience was simply to give
visitors a way to look more closely at works of art (where they touch
yields about a 4x magnification of the painting), the secondary goal
of the experience was to give a way for multiple visitors to have the
same experience at the same time and interact with one another.
Usually in museums any time there's a group activity it's usually
carefully planned and somewhat directed. We wanted an experience
where the very design of the experience encouraged multiple users to
interact without being aware that it was an unusual application of
technology (when we started developing two years ago there were no
standard libraries and few reference examples of multi-touch in
action).

When we first prototyped the tables with a group of people, we were
encouraged when about 8 people all approached the table and began
simultaneously interacting with it without realizing that was
anything unusual.

So, aside from the physical design and reasons for the tables, we
designed the user experience in a very simple way. It would never
have dialogue boxes or interactions that brought a single user into
focus - where we could, always opt for an amodal solution. Second, we
made sure that the parts of the experience that supported the exhibit
-- looking at artwork closely -- didn't require the user to
immediately interact at the full capabilities of what was possible.
ie, if they simply touch the surface, they get some reward that
supports the premise. Anything after that -- touch and dragging or
better yet multi-touch and dragging, were all bonus rounds of
interaction. Nice, but not required. We also deliberately chose not
to rely on new interaction patterns that are possible with multitouch
(such as grabbing the corners of an object and dragging apart to
expand) since we made the assumption that for most visitors that was
still new.

We didn't design a complex experience, but all indications were that
it worked well. The tables were very popular in the exhibition not as
a technology (although there was a percentage of people that
recognized them for being something unusual) but rather as a good
experience. In visitor testing of the exhibit, we found people
spending a long time at the tables, going to look at artworks, and
then coming back to explore more.

All in all, we were pleased with the results and I think it succeeded
very deliberately because of the design choices we made in the user
experience.

Plz visit this page ( http://www.1scale1.com/node/81) ! u will get
introduced with Rosie and there u can download a thesis about
interactions principles and related subjects! We released it this
year actually!